From the start at Ashworth Moor Reservoir — one of many created in this area to serve the nearby towns — the walk sets out on one of the large number of paths and tracks criss-crossing the moors to reach Wolstenholme Fold, a collection of cottages and farms typical of the West Pennines. This was once home to a community of farmer-weavers who supplied part-finished cloth to the small mills in the narrow valleys here. The remains of two of the mills can be found in the valley of Naden Brook, where part of the facade of Ashworth Mill stands in a gloomy wooded hollow below a weir.
In the neighbouring valley of Cheesden Brook are more remains. Kershaw Bridge Mill, founded in 1780, was the first mill recorded in the valley, producing fustian (a hard-wearing mix of cotton and linen) before closing towards the end of the 19th century.
Birtle Dean Mill stood further upstream in a great natural amphitheatre. Built in 1824, this substantial mill — the valley's largest — took in raw cotton and produced dyed finished cloth. Terraces of houses were built for the workers, but the mill lasted for less than eighty years; today only a few slabs and stones remain, occupied on hot summer days by basking lizards and slow worms.
Beyond Birtle Dean the valley loses its thick cover of trees and widens out. The walk winds past shale terraces marking the site of one of several mines developed to produce coal for steam engines that augmented or replaced the earliest water wheels.
Further on, you pass a chimney stack at Lower Wheel, where there was once a bleaching works. The wide valley floor here is home to large numbers of rabbits — easy prey for local foxes and buzzards — while mountain hares in their white winter coats are also known to frequent the valley seeking shelter from high moor winds.
The ruins of Deeply Vale, a calico printing works which later produced paper, are more substantial than most: moss-covered cobbled roads wind in and out of the woodland, ivy- and fern-covered walls stand against nature and vandals, and old rust-stained wheel pits host large trees. The dam holds back a large millpond now fringed by reeds and a favourite haunt of herons, coots, and dragonflies. In the 1970s the site of Deeply Vale was the unlikely setting for outdoor pop festivals featuring performers such as Steve Hillage and The Fall, ending a run in 1979 that was briefly revived in 2015 and 2016.
For about the next mile, the only reminders of the half-dozen or so mills that once thrived here are a couple of dark, brooding ponds, occasional pieces of masonry or cobbled paths, and breached dams. Looking west from the dam at Longlands, there is a fine view of Peel Tower above Ramsbottom and of the distant Winter Hill above Bolton.
Across the top of the narrow valley stretches the impressive facade of Cheesden Lumb Lower Mill. This old wool mill was badly damaged by a storm in 1990, but subsequent work funded by English Heritage has led to its partial restoration.
Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.
